


Cupid’s Chokehold

by orphan_account



Series: White Picket Fence, I'll Put A Rock On Your Finger [6]
Category: Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Bickering, Domestic, Grocery Shopping, Home Life, Jealousy, M/M, married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 06:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18823036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dick introduces Jason to his new life as a married man.





	Cupid’s Chokehold

**Author's Note:**

> Courtesy of prompts from tallestpenny and awakenedelegance on Tumblr! 
> 
> There’s a little less jealousy here than intended, but that may just mean it needs a follow up :)

“I’m not saying you should come back because of Bruce,” Jason insisted, sliding his sunglasses on as they entered the grocery store, pavement melting into concrete and bright summer heat ceding into fluorescent lighting and A/C. “But the gremlin misses you, Bruce is pouting, and Alfred’s snippy. Just show your face for ten minutes and ditch so that I can keep using the Cave’s database for my case without their theatrics.”

Dick sighed, leaning against the handle of the grocery cart as he pushed it towards the produce.

“The sunglasses don’t make you look anymore inconspicuous,” Dick deflected. “You’re so conspicuous, you might as well have come in the muzzle.”

“It’s a face mask, not a muzzle,” Jason griped. “It doubles as a rebreather, it’s practical. I’d get you one too, but I don’t they make them for mouths as big as yours.”

Dick scoffed. “Bold words for a man compromised.”

“I’m not compromised,” Jason frowned. “Where am I compromised?”

Dick stopped abruptly, right next to the onions. He raised his eyebrows at Jason who just shrugged back. So, to demonstrate, Dick pushed and pulled the cart in staccato, jerking motions.

“Use your words,” Jason taunted. Dick choked out his indignation and released to cart to gesture wildly at Jason.

“Don’t patronize me! You’re the grown ass man sitting in a grocery cart!”

Jason tilted his sunglasses back and bat his eyes at Dick from where he sat, bent in half, in the grocery cart. His legs were too long to fit, so he’d draped them over the edge and tucked his jacket underneath his tailbone. The entire cart might’ve tipped over if not for the fact Jason leaned back to try and distribute the weight. 

“Someone’s going to come yell at us,” Dick warned him, even as he began pushing the cart over to a stack of prepackaged mushrooms. “And everyone’s staring at you. Can you feel them staring? Because they are.” 

“I have many afflictions, but social phobia isn’t one of them,” Jason crowed, nestling deeper into the undoubtedly uncomfortable metal cage. “If they’re staring, it’s at you, pretty boy. I thought you knew better than to shop without at least a baseball cap.”

“Yeah, and I thought you knew how to walk,” Dick griped, picking up a cellophane wrapped tray of mushrooms. He frowned. “Do you see any cremini mushrooms? All I’m seeing are shiitake.”

Jason hummed and sat up, glancing about the shelves. “There are portobello mushrooms. Just use those,” he picked up a package of portobello mushroom caps and handed them to Dick. Dick shook his head and returned them.

“No, I need cremini mushrooms. Portobello are too big, they’re dry, and they’re more...” Dick paused, waving his hand as he tried to think of the word. “Mushroomy?”

“My god, you’re a poet,” Jason snorted, settling back into the cart. “What are you making?”

“Nothing,” Dick said, pushing the cart a few feet past the prepackaged fare to get a look at the bundles of whole mushrooms showering beneath the vegetable spray. “I don’t really eat mushrooms.”

“You don’t eat mushrooms,” Jason repeated, growling with a flinch when Dick stuck a hand underneath the spray only to flick the droplets at Jason. “You don’t eat mushrooms, but you know the difference between a cremini and a portobello?”

Dick hummed, the hum pitching with his delight when he apparently found the mushroom he was looking for. Jason watched curiously as Dick plucked a bundle and checked underneath the caps before returning the bundle in favor of another in the pile.

“What are you doing?” Jason prodded.

“Checking the gills,” Dick murmured, glancing beneath the caps again. This time he snagged a plastic bag and dropped them in, tossing the bag onto Jason’s stomach afterwards. Jason picked them up and looked the mushrooms over, but he didn’t know enough about mushrooms to know what he was looking at. If he needed mushrooms, shiitake usually did just fine. He dropped them onto himself and looked up to see Dick was still perusing the cremini mushrooms. As Jason watched, Dick returned some and tossed the others to Jason to be bagged.

By the end of it, Jason had to scramble for a few more bags to hold the volume.

“What the hell, Dick,” Jason grumbled, semi buried underneath thin plastic bags full of mushrooms. “I thought you didn’t eat them? You’re buying enough to bathe in.”

Dick snorted and pushed the cart down towards the cruciferous greens.

“I don’t eat them, but Slade does. He cuts his red meat with mushrooms sometimes,” Dick finally said, after layering six bags of kale and arugula respectively on top of Jason. Jason was beginning to feel a bit like Fortunato.

“Huh,” Jason said, lifting a bag of kale. “Slade the one whose eating his veggies too? I don’t think I’ve ever seen your kitchen stocked with anything more nutritionally substantial than a jar of peanut butter and a half of an avocado.”

“He makes these smoothies with kale. They’re actually pretty good, I’ve started drinking them before and after patrol. Helps with post-patrol inflammation.”

Dick pushed them along, gathering various fruits in similar volumes. Jason began tucking some of the food into the space behind him, between his back and the bottom of the cart.

“If it’s for him, why isn’t he the one burying his brother in rabbit food?” Jason asked after Dick not so subtlety aimed a pineapple at Jason’s crotch. 

“Don’t be insensitive, his brother’s dead, Jay,” Dick chided. “And he’s been out of town, I’m trying to stock up before he comes home.”

“Comes home,” Jason repeatedly, slowly. “Like. You mean when he comes around the safe house?”

“Yeah, our house, where we live together,” Dick said without looking at Jason.

“Huh,” Jason said again.

Jason went home with Dick, at Dick’s invitation. He told Dick he’d go to help with the groceries, but in truth, Jason was curious. He’d never seen inside the house, none of them had, but Jason had seen Dick’s apartment, and another safe house of Slade’s. So who could blame Jason his curiosity, knowing as Jason did how unbelievably messy Dick was in comparison to Slade’s sleek militarism?

And so he rode with Dick, who hummed along to radio bubblegum pop as if his lips weren’t sloped into a frown and his shoulders weren’t so tense that they’d shatter on impact.

“Is it, uh. Is it okay if I come over?” Jason finally prodded, after they’d turned onto the long highway that led first to the Manor and then to the House. Dick’s brows furrowed and his lips parted as if he were mulling over the question.

“What?” Dick asked, tearing his gaze from the road to shoot Jason a curious glance.“Of course it is, little wing, I asked you to. Do you want me to drop you off somewhere else instead?”

“No, no,” Jason said, sinking down in his seat and bracing his feet against the dash like he used to in the Batmobile. Then he slid his seat back and lowered his feet back to the floorboard because he was 6’ tall and nostalgia wasn’t worth a strained back. “I just don’t want you to get in trouble or anything.”

“With who?” Dick asked incredulously. Realization dawned on his face before Jason had a chance to clarify, but then Dick’s frown quirked into a delighted grin and his raised eyebrows knitted together as he snorted out a laugh. “You think Slade’s going to mind? Jason, he’s not my keeper.”

Jason blinked, rearing back in his seat. “Nah, ‘course, he’s just an anal-retentive, ex-special-ops-turned-mercenary with a taste for the most dangerous game.”

From where Dick’s left hand rested on the wheel, Jason could see that Dick was running his thumb across the ring looped around his forth finger. When his gaze flicked from Dick’s hand to his face, he saw that Dick was watching him from the corner of his eye. Jason scowled.

“Don’t get passive aggressive, I know he’s your... yeah,” Jason grumbled, sitting back. He leaned his seat down and crossed his arms. He blinked up at the car ceiling. “You’re a little old to be wearing eau de teen spirit, you know.”

Dick burst out laughing, a pretty melodic sound that most definitely did not make Jason blush.

“Nightwing was my youthful rebellion’s pièce de résistance,” Dick murmured as passing trees fell away into massive tracks of cleared, artfully curated land dotted with massive mansions that didn’t look so massive when tossed alone in fields as they were. “And that turned into a pretty long term relationship.”

Jason grimaced. “You’re so full of shit. Got any animals or just a bunch of wasted land?”

At that, Dick brightened, and he happily babbled to Jason about his plans to build a small barn (or rather convince Clark to help him build a small barn) where Damian could keep animals, namely horses. As he spoke, Jason’s stomach twisted.

“If you board horses, you’ll have to live here full time, or hire someone who does,” Jason warned. Dick slowly turned onto a gravel driveway, and the crunching of wheels over loose rock was nearly enough to mask Dick’s response.

“I kind of do.”

The house itself was fairly ugly, an asymmetrical McMansion crafted from wealth rather than charm. But Jason couldn’t help but salivate over the security amenities.

“I’m surprised there aren’t cameras,” he cooed after Dick showed him the front door access panel, the infrared sensors, the bulletproof windows, the hand painted birdhouse that disguised a sizable explosive.

“Oh, there are,” Dick assured him as he pushed open the door, his arms laden with groceries. “I’ve been mapping them out for weeks, and I’ve only found a fraction. He told me the number of cameras as a birthday present.”

“Jesus,” Jason muttered as they entered the nearly mythical marital home.

Jason wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t the wide, tastefully decorated foyer bisected by a spiral staircase appeared almost mundane for the scandal that surrounded the arrangement. 

“Kitchen’s on the left,” Dick said, tossing his keys into a stone bowl perched on a short pillar next to the door. Jason glanced down expectantly, waiting for Dick to kick off his shoes as he usually did at home. And Dick did remove his shoes, but rather than slinging them off and leaving them to land wherever, he carefully toed them off before waving his foot in front of what must have been motion sensors because a 2x2 door slid open to reveal a cupboard hidden in the base of the staircase. With a socked foot, Dick kicked his shoes inside the compartment. When he moved away, the door slid closed with a click so that the space was once again camouflaged against the rest of the staircase.

“Hey, Dick,” Jason chirped as the groceries’ condensation seeped through his shirt. “Why do you have a tiny hole for your shoes in your front entrance?”

Dick walked on, presumably towards the kitchen, so Jason followed.

“It’s not technically for my shoes,” Dick offered. “The Roomba lived there first.”

“And?” Jason pushed.

“And then Slade got tired of me leaving shoes in the front so we moved the Roomba. Now Little John lives in a hall closet and my shoes live in the cubby.” They reached the kitchen, all monochromatic with gleaming chrome appliances and granite countertops. The backsplash behind the sink was a mosaic of some sort. The shape formed by black, gray, and various shades of blue tiles reminded Jason of a convoluted metro map, but he politely held his tongue.

“You named your Roomba after a Robin Hood sidekick?” Jason snorted, dumping the bags of groceries onto the kitchen island. Dick added his load to the pile and began unpacking the plastic bags and putting away the food.

“Yeah, all of the Roombas are named after Merry Men.”

Jason chose to leave for the rest of the groceries rather than try to unpack that.

When they finished putting everything away, Dick took him on a tour of the rest of the house. For the most part, it was the predictably spacious, gaudy, heinously high tech mansion promised by the exterior. But closer inspection revealed disturbing details.

For example, the backsplash was actually a color coded map of Gotham’s tunnel network.

And in each doorway, there was a metal bar installed horizontally. The bars were high enough that Jason had to hop to tap one.

“What’s with the extra hardware?” He asked. Dick grinned and hopped up too, higher than Jason, to wrap both hands around the bar. He adjusted his grip and then lifted his legs into a perfect right angle. He maintained the pose even as he began a swift set of pull-ups.

“They’re pull-up bars.”

“Did they come with the house?” Jason muttered with furrowed brows. Dick lowered his legs and released the bar.

“‘Course not. Slade installed them after I moved in.”

“Really,” Jason repeated, slowly. “He installed them after you moved in.”

Dick ducked his head sheepishly. “Well, after I nearly snapped part of the bannister.

“Huh,” Jason said.

In the master bedroom, Jason cocked his head at a framed poster, hanging on a wall already crowded with various framed Haly’s Circus posters and a few maps. The advertisements and maps made sense, but this particular print looked to be a movie poster. It dripped bright orange and yellow with thick white letters announcing “FAIL SAFE” underneath smaller, blocky black text that promised, “‘FAIL SAFE’ WILL HAVE YOU SITTING ON THE BRINK OF ETERNITY.”

“What’s that?” Jason asked, gesturing to the poster. Dick beamed.

“It’s a Cold War flick from ‘64. We throw around a lot of Cold War buzzwords, so we did a marathon one night. He likes this one a lot, and it’s in the right colors, so when I came across an original I snagged it.”

It looked good on the wall, amid a sea of blue and navy and orange and black. Slade’s structure and severity were present in the neatly made bed and the sharp furniture, but the decor was all Dick.

“You mind if I stay the night for a movie?” Jason asked, glancing at Dick with a tight throat. Dick grinned softly and bumped Jason’s shoulder with his own.

“Sure. _Tombstone_?”

“No shit,” Jason confirmed, before they continued the tour.

“What’s that?” Jason asked again, this time while they were in the den. Dick followed the line of Jason’s pointed finger.

“It’s a hamper,” Dick said.

“Why is it in the middle of the den? Shouldn’t that be in a laundry room?” Jason crossed his arms. It was a petty stand to make, but Jason was still searching for the catch in this ill-fated arrangement, evidence that their cohabitation really was the charade it should have been.

Dick shrugged. “I come here after patrol sometimes when I’m too wired to head to bed. Slade got tired of finding my dirty clothes everywhere, so he put a hamper in here for me.”

Jason’s eyebrows couldn’t possibly crawl any higher without separating from his face but they made a valiant effort. “Deathstroke the Terminator put a hamper in here so that you wouldn’t have to, what, walk to the laundry room?”

“Yeah,” Dick shrugged again. “There are a few of them, scattered around the house. Some are more obvious than others. It’s pretty nifty.”

Something ugly flared behind Jason’s rib cage and Jason rolled his eyes. “Your poor fucking maid. Or is Wintergreen the one who has to hunt down all of your dirty underwear just to start a load in the wash?”

Dick crossed his arms too, and Jason could already see the prissy curl to his lips. “No,” Dick clipped, “I load the washer and dryer. Slade folds. I dust, Slade polishes. I sweep, Slade mops, and the Merry Men vacuum. We’re grown fucking men, Jason. Anymore questions about how we keep house or are you done?”

Jason swallowed. “I’m done,” he muttered.

The rest of the tour was quick, and relatively quiet, but any remaining tension fell away when the pizza arrived.

“You sure the hubby doesn’t care that I’m staying the night?” Jason teased as they settled onto the overstuffed couch in the den again. Dick’s eyes grew as wide as saucers and he made a guttural noise before chucking a pillow at Jason’s head.

“Christ, don’t use that term, I hate it,” Dick scrunched up his face and shuddered before shaking it off to grab a slice of pizza. “Besides, Slade’s not my keeper, and he’s not even home for another couple of nights. As long as we clean up, he’s not going to care.”

Jason hummed and tossed away the pillow. He leaned forward and snagged his own slice before sitting back. Dick killed the lights and started the movie before tossing his phone to the carpeted ground and curling up into the cushions.

A few hours later, Jason stirred awake. The room was dark but for the glow of the television’s cycling screensavers. They’d fallen asleep on the couch, Jason laid out on his side, and Dick’s head balanced on his hip with a pillow to soften the position. As they’d slept, though, Jason must have rolled, because he woke up on his back with Dick draped over his legs and stomach. Dick’s head rested on Jason’s clothed sternum, and Jason yawned, tilting his head back to stretch as much as he could while pinned.

And then he froze.

There, in the threshold, Slade leaned against the doorframe, eye trained on Jason. Jason felt the blood rush to his head as he hung there, unable to move for the weights of Dick’s body and Slade’s glare.

After an eternity passed, Dick stirred.

“Fuck,” Dick murmured into Jason’s shirt. Jason jerked his head up to look down at Dick as wakefulness began shiver through Dick’s prone form. “Fuck, I think I fell asleep before he shot Curly Bill, didn’t I?”

Jason didn’t even hear Slade stalk closeted until Slade reached over the back of the couch to rub circles into Dick’s back. Jason flinched, but Dick jerked up so suddenly, Jason doubted he noticed.

“Slade!” Dick whispered, as if Slade’s presence hadn’t already snatched the peace from the room. “You weren’t supposed to be home.”

Jason braced himself to see something awful, some outward display of anger and retribution over Dick inviting Jason into their space, onto their couch.

Instead, Slade threaded his fingers through Dick’s hair and murmured, just as softly, “I finished early. Clean up, it’s time for bed.”

Dick obligingly dismounted Jason and began picking up the pizza and trash they’d scattered around the den. It took a few moments, but Jason joined Dick. Dick seemed oblivious to the hostility, but every time Jason risked a glance, he met Slade’s cold glare.

Once everything was put away, Dick took Jason to a guest room and wished him goodnight before retreating. Jason did not immediately prepare for bed, instead choosing to listen near his door, in case he needed to intervene.

Realizing the rooms were likely soundproofed, he eventually eased from the guest room and padded down the hall, towards the master bedroom, where muted light still shone from under the door. He didn’t need to draw too close before he picked up Dick’s voice.

“— Tower. But afterwards I should be home for a while.”

“I’ll be in Connecticut beginning on the 23rd, but I should be home before Memorial Day. If you feel strongly about it, we can do something that Tuesday.”

Jason furrowed his brows. He’d expected shouting and arguing, but it sounded as if they were... holiday planning.

“We’ll talk about it,” Dick yawned.

Jason heard Slade’s voice but couldn’t make out what was said. He heard the flick of a switch and the light seeping from under the door faded to black. Jason glanced back at the guest room. He had no reason to haunt the hallway, not if Dick was going to sleep, unscathed.

Once again, Jason didn’t hear Slade approach until it was too late. Slade’s hand wrapped around Jason’s nose and mouth, and then Slade dragged Jason into the guest room, practically dumping him onto the floor.

Slade towered over Jason, so Jason succumbed to the urge to spit at him. Slade grunted.

“Know your place, boy,” Slade ground out so lowly that it nearly sounded like a growl, Jason scowled.

“Speak for yourself,” he snapped.

Unimpressed, Slade appraised Jason, glancing up and down the tense line of his body. Finally, just before Jason was going to break the silence himself, Slade said, “The kid knows what I am. You’ll show yourself too, soon enough.”

Without further ado, Slade turned on his heels and walked out the door, closing it with a click behind him. Jason heard another click, a lock, and cursed.

Anger was safe, and so that’s what Jason took to bed with him.

**Author's Note:**

> The next morning, Jason woke to an unlocked door and breakfast. Dick was none the wiser.


End file.
